Mountain lions are learning to live with developments

Mountain lions are surviving and adapting to life around the urban fringes of eastern Ventura County despite fears that the steady encroachment on open space by developers would have an adverse affect.

That’s the latest finding from a research study overseen by wildlife ecologist Ray Sauvajot, chief of resources management for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

“The prognosis is there are reasons to be positive,” said Sauvajot, who presented his findings to a meeting of the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency in Thousand Oaks recently. “They are still here and every time we think we know all of the individuals, another one shows up.”

Sauvajot and his small team of researchers have been trapping and tagging mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills since 2002, tracking their movements using GPS collars and motion sensor cameras placed along wildlife corridors.

Although the mountain lion population along the urban fringe of Los Angeles and Ventura counties is small, Sauvajot said, it has confounded his worst fears that the lions would not survive at all.

“The lions in this area are moving around as they should be. They are eating their natural prey. They are reproducing, having young. So, conservation policies up to now have been successful,” he said.

During the course of the study, the research team has tracked 11 lions. It is currently tracking three.

A male mountain lion can roam up to 20 miles a day and its territory may be as great as two-thirds of the Santa Monica Mountain range, said Sauvajot, who estimates 15 or so mountain lions currently live in the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills.

He said their continued presence, though, will depend on keeping wildlife corridors open so that they can move freely between the urban fringe to the Angeles and Los Padres national forests.

“Their future depends on their ability to move between open space and the national forests, but I am more optimistic now than when we started this study in 2002,” Sauvajot said.

Matt Kouba, a former park ranger who is now the parks supervisor for the Conejo Recreation and Park District, welcomes the research findings and says it’s vital to the natural environment that the mountain lion population is protected.

“They are an indication of how healthy our ecosystem is,” he said. “The most fragile species are the top predators so if they’re still there, it’s a good thing.”

Unlike other wildlife such as coyotes, which have become bolder at entering urban areas and can exhibit a lack of fear of people, mountain lions are sticking firmly to their wild habitat.

Kouba said that he worked as a park ranger for 16 years before he saw his first mountain lion and that sightings of the secretive big cats by humans are rare.

The lions, which feed primarily on mule deer, are posing no threat to people or to their pets and show no desire to be “urbanized.”

“They are doing the best they can to stay out of the way,” Sauvajot said. “Mountain lions see people more than people see them.”

The research study, which is supported by the National Park Service, is funded by various agencies, including the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy and California State Parks.

“It’s been an amazing study and it’s going to help preserve mountain lions in the future because we now know how important the wildlife corridors are,” Kouba said.

To that end, the California Department of Transportation is considering creating an underpass beneath Highway 101 near Liberty Canyon Road that would allow mountain lions and other wildlife to cross the freeway to get to open habitat on either side.

“We’re currently undertaking studies to determine the best place for that,” said Karl Price from Caltrans’ Environmental Planning department.

Photographs taken at underpasses on Highway 118 have shown mountain lions passing through the tunnels underneath the freeway. During the recent improvements to Highway 23, fencing was installed to funnel animals to a cleared culvert under the road.